


looks on tempests

by irnan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Family, Fluff and Angst, OT3, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 22:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6168433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes, and the way he does or doesn't fight with the people he loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	looks on tempests

“Don’t fight with ‘em,” said Monty disbelievingly. “Teach me your ways, Sarge. I’ve got six and they’re all unbearable.”

“It’s not,” said Bucky, and broke off to light a cigarette. “It’s not hard, you idiot. They’re your sisters, you’re the eldest, right? Right. So they were your responsibility.”

“They were the nurse’s responsibility,” said Monty, and fended off a barrage of hats thrown at him as the others yelled: trust the limey toff to come out with a line like that. “S’trewth. All I’m required to do is ferry ‘em round their debutante balls.”

“You’re a disgrace,” said Bucky, laughing; but some part of him meant it very much indeed. “An absolute disgrace.”

“Cheers,” said Monty, laughing too, and the conversation moved on to Gabe’s sister’s wedding, and then the horrifying prospect of Howard having a sibling, and then suddenly they were teasing each other about girls, and it was the weekly Have-Steve-And-Peggy-Kissed-Yet survey, and Bucky started mentally editing out the parts of the conversation he was not going to put in his letter to Sarah Jane tomorrow, and for a little while, even in the middle of this rotten war, he was happy.

+++

“But I don’t want to!” That was the kicker. Bucky clenched his fists angrily and glared in fury at the bassinet. The annoying little beast was crying and crying, and it was early and he’d finished all his homework and Steve had won a new marble off of Bernie Neuhaus at school and he wanted to go play.

“Don’t want!” said Mam, her voice rising dangerously. “Don’t want, you think I want? You think life’s about what you want, James Buchanan? That there’s your sister, that is. You’ve a responsibility to her, you’re to look after her from now on.” Suddenly her voice softened a little. “You’re the grown up. She needs you.”

Bucky said sulkily, “Don’ wanner to.”

“She’s a baby,” said Mam. “She don’t know anything but whether she’s safe or not and you make her safe.”

Bucky kicked at his school satchel angrily. _You’re her Mam_ , he wanted to yell, _you shoulda thought of that before you made her happen_. Then he marched over to the bassinet. The hell he made her safe. Rebecca was a howling little scrunched up ball of nuisance and he didn’t _care_ if he made her safe.

She was tiny, and all her face seemed to be mouth and scrunched up eyes. Her face was wet and she was kicking her legs and waving her little fists. She had hair, barely, dark like his own, and right now she was red all over. At last she seemed to sense he was watching her, or she got sick of crying so loud, and paused to hiccup instead. It was a funny glurping sort of a noise, and it made him smile. When she did it again it stopped being funny and started being a little pitiful.

He heaved a sigh, and reached in to pick her up. She was heavy, a hot damp weight that wriggled about and hiccupped more, but – but –

She’d stopped crying. Bucky bit his lip. Then he bounced her a little the way Mam did, and she glurped again; with a little imagination it could be called a giggle.

Bucky sighed.

“Just you call me if she needs anything,” said Mam. “I’m in the shop while your Da’s doin’ his rounds.”

“Just you and me, Becky,” said Bucky. “Becky and Bucky.” That sounded dumb. Sure, if they were twins, but he was the grown up here. “No. You’re gonna hafta be Becca.”

And she was, for the rest of her life.

+++

“I WANT IT,” Sarah Jane shrieked. Christ, the kid had lungs on her. Bucky dodged the flailing pudgy baby hands and said, “You can’t have it,” calm as he could. Sixteen was looking a lot less exciting from this side of his birthday than it had from the other. Steve could never find out.

“IT’S MINE,” Sarah Jane bellowed. “IT’S MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE.”

“It’s mine,” Bucky said. “It’s my book, Uncle Jack sent it to me for my birthday.”

“I want it,” Sarah Jane wept angrily, “wanna pretty pictures, want want want.” She was really working herself up now, and Bucky winced. If she was Emmy or Becca he would have walked away and left her to it just to teach her that tantrums got you nowhere in life, but she was neither Emmy nor Becca: Sarah Jane was mischievous but she didn’t really throw tantrums, not like they had or other kids did. Even as a baby she’d been calm and happy and rarely cried except for hunger. Her fine flyaway hair was staticky, and her face was scrunched up and bright, bright red; suddenly he thought, is she sick? She was much too old for colic, but maybe the flu…

“Bucky,” she wept, dropping out of anger into pure upset. “Bucky Bucky.”

“Aw, sweetheart, c’mere,” he said, and snatched her up. She was hot because she’d been wailing; he carried her to the kitchen to find a cloth he could put on her face. “C’mere, precious girl, I got you, I’m right here.”

She sniffled helplessly, clinging to him, her little feet kicking at his stomach and back, and he crooned to her, nonsense endearments that kept her calm, until he’d decided that yes, it was a temperature, and put the kettle on to make her tea. Then he remembered that he was supposed to be meeting Steve to go to Coney Island, and nearly cussed.

“Becca!” he hollered up the stairs. “Becca! Get down here – I want you to run over to Aunt Sarah’s and tell Steve Sarah Jane’s got the flu.” There went his whole weekend, and his birthday present from Uncle Jack too; for a couple instants he fantasised about making the whole yelling pack of them just go away, taking their noise and their colds and their acquisitiveness with them, but then Sarah Jane sniffled against his shirt again and he remembered he’d lay down in the street and die to keep her safe, so he would.

“I love you, SJ,” he said, bouncing her absentmindedly on his hip. “BECCA! I’m gonna look after you, sweeting. Just you let me.”

+++

Da said, “You don’t have –“

He was white as a sheet, and rubbing at his bad hip, and clearly not thinking straight. Bucky took a deep breath. “It’s a draft letter,” he said. “Not a damn party invitation. I gotta go. I’m gonna go. You know what they’re doin’, over there in Europe? It’s not right.”

You want me to be a coward? he wanted to demand. You want me in prison, is that better? Maybe to Da it was. He didn’t get it, he thought it was the same war, over and over, when any idiot could see it wasn’t, when any idiot could see that Hitler was different, that the Nazis were more, and worse, than just a pack of Krauts up their own asses and too dim to know when to stop. If you asked Da if he knew any Jews he’d frown at you and maybe remember old Mr Stern in the bookstore, but Bucky’s world was a little different to Da’s, his Brooklyn was different, and he’d heard the stories from his friends and their families.

Did he want to go to war and get blown to smithereens in a muddy trench in France? No. Did he feel better about the entire enterprise because he knew, or believed, that it was the right thing to do? Well… marginally. At least it wouldn’t be a total waste, if something good might come of it.

Besides, it meant money. He wouldn’t need it over there, so it could go to the girls. Becca was talking college, and that cost something.

“I want you to be safe,” said Da.

Bucky laughed, a little wryly. “We’re running out of safety in the world, Da… Why should I get to be the exception?” Then he did something he’d never done before, and took his father’s hands in his. “It’ll be all right.”

Da laughed. “We all said that.”

“You came back,” said Bucky.

“Countless thousands didn’t.”

“Well,” Bucky said gently. “I get my luck from somewhere.”

“The Devil’s own luck is the only luck you’ve ever had, boy,” said his father. “Sometimes I thank God for your sisters.”

“For bringing me up right?” said Bucky, grinning, and they were both still laughing when Mam came in the shop to tell them dinner was nearly ready.

+++

“YOU DON’T GET TO TELL ME WHO TO MARRY,” Becca bellowed, red in the face, and Bucky threw his uniform jacket across the room and thought resignedly, here we go again; seemed like he’d spent half his life since age eight been yelled at by a succession of red-faced girls with dark hair and grey eyes. The noses were different, their chins and cheekbones, and their problems too, but they all got dumped on his head, and he was the one who had to sort through the mess.

“Don’t start yelling,” he said, though he was sorely tempted to smack her the way he’d used to when she was little and about to put her hand in the fireplace because of the “pitty red”.

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

This was going in circles already.

“I’m not,” he said reasonably. “I’m just sayin’ –“

“Everyone likes him but you!”

“Everyone pretends to like him but me,” said Bucky flatly. “And even I like him. He’s very likeable.”

“But?!” Becca wiped a hand over her eyes; they were glistening. She’d never been a good crier, not like Emmy, who could turn on the waterworks like a Broadway actress, and knew how and when to deploy them for maximum effect – namely, when her brother was out of the room and couldn’t catch her at it.

“A year ago you were talking about college,” said Bucky, putting his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “You were talking about being a doctor.”

“I still can be. He says –“

“Becca my Becca, he wants in your knickers and he’ll say anything to get there. Don’t throw that at me. He’s twelve, chances are he believes every damn sweet thing he says to you.”

She clenched her fists in the cushion. “But you don’t.”

“I think,” said Bucky, choosing his words carefully, “that unless he’s a lot more grown up than he’s shown himself to be so far he’s gonna change his mind on a lot of things real quick when you’re married to him and he realises you’re studying too hard to make his dinner at night. That’s what I think.”

Becca sat down sharply on the cushion-less armchair, stricken, and he saw then that she was so angry with him because he was speaking her own doubts aloud, and thus confirming them.

“Sweetheart,” he said, and crossed the room to her side. “Don’t cry. Just – just give it time. What’s the hurry, huh?” Then, struggling to keep his voice gentle, “You in trouble?”

She laughed, a gurgling, strangled hiccup of a laugh that reminded him of when she was a baby. “No,” she said. “No, nothing like that. I just – I love him and –“

Relief made Bucky dizzy. He struggled for something to say, something wise and older-brother-ly; him, who’d stepped out with plenty of girls but had never found one to love. Maybe Connie would be different. How stupid was it that the baby sisters whose nappies he’d changed seemed to know more about that elusive emotion than he did?

“Then you’ll still love him in ten years’ time,” he said, “when you’re a doctor, and ten years after that, and ten after that –“

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds?” said Becca, laughing and leaning against him. “Oh Buck, I’m sorry I screamed at you. Everyone’s been on my case, and I – I sent –“ her body shook, and then she burst out with it, the way she’d always burst out with her secrets since she was tiny. “I sent the application, and I’m so afraid.”

“You’re a champ,” Bucky said and kissed her hair. “I’m proud of you.”

“Don’t,” she said, sniffling. “And now I’m making a scene and you’re going tomorrow –“

“I’m going to sleep better for knowing that you’re gonna be a doctor.”

She laughed again, clear as a bell and happy, now she’d made her mind up. Not yet. He could see it in her face, in the set of her jaw. Not yet. “You’re gonna sleep better for going to the Expo with Connie and Steve and enjoying yourself and having a beer. Go on. Off with you.”

+++

_How dare you not come home_ , the writing read. It was faded and blurred – Mam’s tears had fallen on the page and she had let them. _You terrified me so, I love you, my boy, and don’t think it makes it one whit better that Steve’s with you now, you think you’re invincible, you hellion boys._

Bucky couldn’t read anymore. His hands were shaking.

“I found it in her diary after she died,” Emmy said, shifting her shawl around her shoulders. “I didn’t know she kept a diary.” She snorted, wetly. “There was a whole chest.”

Bucky laughed too, drew his sleeve over his eyes. “What – did you read them?”

“A few then. More as I got older. It hurt less.”

He nodded.

“You can have them. You should have them.”

“No,” Bucky said quietly. “No, not yet, Emmy, I –“

“You what?” Her voice had grown sharp, over the years; he was surprised by it. Emmy was always the quiet one, the peacemaker, the one who got her way by sweetness and subterfuge. In vain he’d tried to teach her to stand her ground a little firmer, but apparently life had taken over that lesson where her brother had left off. “You what, you can’t face it? Coward.”

That might have stung him, seventy years ago. He was too tired to rise to it now.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I am. Em, I’m outside of a maximum security – no, I’m outside of the _electric chair_ by the skin of my teeth and Steve’s pure stubbornness. Yeah I’m a coward. I don’t even know where they’re buried.”

Emily was silent for a minute or two. Then she said, “Call yourself my brother?” scathing. “Call yourself Bucky Barnes? You don’t get a right to. I never knew him shirk a damn thing in his life.” Then, all of a sudden, she was crying. “That’s exactly how we ended up here, isn’t it? You thinking duty this, and Steve the other…”

Bucky was stunned – stunned and a little afraid. She was so – so frail. “Don’t you blame Steve for my bad choices,” he managed at last. “I made those all on my own.” It was all right. He sat by her and put his arms around her: Christ, she was thin, all bones and angles, someone was gonna hear about this, see if they didn’t. There was a houseful of nieces and nephews two floors below them who had regarded him with something approaching religious awe when he came in; the lot of them would catch it if they hadn’t been looking to Emmy right, he swore.

She was his baby sister. She had never not been fragile, his to protect.

“Don’t I know it,” said Emmy, referring to his bad choices. “And here you are still making them instead of looking after _yourself_ for once in your damn stupid life. God, you’re a mess. A _mess_. Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

“I know,” he said. “Everything’s just –“

“The flying fuck has everything got to do with the state of your hair,” said Emmy. “Or how you _dress_. You’re ninety-nine, not twenty-seven. Come back and talk to me when you look like my brother again.”

Suddenly, helplessly, Bucky started to laugh. She sounded – Christ, she sounded exactly like him. He could hear their mother in the hallway, shouting _you listen to your brother Emily Louise this is Church we’re going to not a coal cellar._

“All right,” he said. “All right, all right, I’ll cut it, keep your knickers on.”

+++

He fought with Steve, of course. Viciously, sneakily, openly and physically, or by ignoring each other until one of them cracked: they were brothers, you fought with your brother, that was how the world worked. Steve couldn't be budged or bludgeoned or blamed until he went, and even if you did bludgeon and blame him, he sprang back up like a jack-in-the-box and did the same to you. Bucky worried for him, but they were brothers. Steve’s place was not behind him but beside.

+++

Girlfriends were different again. Bucky knew how to fight with his family, how to step and turn and deflect and keep to the subject; he didn’t know how to fight with his girlfriends. He finished those fights by throwing everything he had at them: slammed doors, and shouting, and viciously-phrased sentences that tended to end the relationship right there and then. Take Cathy Scott - or rather, don't, seeing as she'd been dead for thirty years and he didn't actually remember what he'd said to her; he was just sure that he'd ended it with great and careful deliberation.

_The trouble with you_ , his Mam had tried to tell him once, _is that you laugh everything off that most others would fight about. Then you come up against the one big thing you dinna know how to compromise on, and instead of being patient and trying to work it out it blows right up in your face, because you've not practiced_.

He didn't think he'd listened to her at the time; he'd been too angry about whatever the hell it was - he didn't even remember the girl's name now, which was embarrassing. But it was sure as hell coming back to him now, which, he supposed, just went to show that even Nazi mindwipes stood no chance against his mother. They should have given her his Sergeant’s stripes, and his father’s medals too.

"If you're ever going to talk again," said Natasha nastily, "now would be the time."

"I am trying," said Bucky, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket and clenching them into angry fists, "not to -"

"Have feelings?"

"Oh you can fuck right off, little miss no-place-in-the-world," he said, stung into indiscretion by the sheer hypocrisy of it, and she cackled, unpleasantly.

"There you are. Man up, Soldier. You can fight with Steve but not with me? Screw that."

"Steve's not -" Bucky said, and stopped.

Natasha's mouth opened into a perfect o. "Going anywhere?" she said. "Neither am I, you fucking moron."

Bucky didn't know what to say - or rather he did - he knew exactly what to say to make her so angry she would never forgive him, to shatter this fragile new trust they had built with a breath. He didn't know how to answer her - how to fight with her like ordinary human beings without going straight for the jugular: he never had, because - Mam had been right - he’d never loved his girlfriends enough to try. And Natasha - Natasha whom he'd already betrayed, and already let down, and already hurt, over and over -

They stared at each other in blank silence across the breadth of the sunlit kitchen.

"You fight with Steve," she said again. "You two can yell at each other till the windows rattle. But you never raise your voice to me. You never fight with me. And it pisses me off. You know - better than anyone, you know what I am, but you're standing here doing your weird Forties be-nice-to-the-little-lady crap -"

That was absolutely the last straw in insults, so much so it made him breathless. "Romanov," he said, furious, "you want me to fight with you, I can do that, I can do that no fucking problem. You never tidy your damn shoes out of the hall - or shine them - when you cook this place looks like a motherfucking bomb crater, you've stuck your cold feet into my shins every night of our lives you come to bed, you lie like other people breathe and you never fucking tell me anything unless you're absolutely forced to at gunpoint because you think you're god's gift to mankind and heaven forbid anyone else on the planet has a brain of their own -"

" _What_!"

"Shut the fuck up, I'm not finished.” Once he started it all came out like someone had put a dime in a slot machine and ordered a litany of insults and accusations tailor-made for the one person he had sworn blind to never hurt again. What the fuck did that make him, beyond a scumbag? “You push me round this relationship sometimes like it's a con and I'm the mark -"

"That's bullshit!" Look at her: face flushed red with anger, vibrating with it, leaning towards him like she was waiting for him to get close enough to wrap her strong hands around his neck - what a 180 turnaround from the cool, calculated digs of less than five minutes ago. Was that the difference between the way he fought with her and the way he fought with Steve? But what the fuck did she think she'd get out of seeing him like that? "That's bullshit, what, you think this is a mission for me? You think I go meet Nick on Sundays and report our whole lives to him, from your favourite beer on down to the way you like to fuck me?"

"I think some days that's the only way you know how to react to anyone," Bucky shouted at her: the last line, the final unforgiveable thing -

"Maybe it is," she said, all up in his face and quivering with fury. "Maybe you're right. But by god that makes two of us, Barnes. There's only one person in your whole life you've ever given a real damn about, isn't there, there's only one person you've ever trusted with everything you are, and that's Steve. The rest of us are all just _decoration_ ," and the fact that she'd _dare_ , that she'd ever dare imply a thing like that about his Mam, about Da, about his sisters whom he missed like he missed his flesh left arm –

– about _herself_ –

They broke three mugs and a plate fucking on the countertop next to the fridge; she gouged his back open with her fingernails and laughed in triumph when he bruised her viciously, as if the marks were points she'd earned, and after they both stumbled to floor and sprawled side by side on the tile, where slowly some semblance of common sense and rationality started to leak back into Bucky's brain.

The kitchen door was shut. It hadn't been when they'd - had Steve come down and - he must have. Christ. Bucky put his hand over his face.

Finally Natasha sighed, a long low thing full of regret and satisfaction mingled.

"Hey," she said softly.

Bucky rubbed at his eyes. The floor was getting warm under his back with body heat, but his scratches stung and it wasn't exactly comfortable; his slacks and underwear were tangled up around his knees, and - Christ, he thought bleakly - when he unclenched his left hand he realised the scraps of fabric caught between the rills of his fingers had once been Natasha's undies.

He turned his head to look at her.

She smiled at him. "I'm still here."

"You know what I said about you being manipulative?" Bucky said.

"I wasn't," she protested. "Not _deliberately_. It just, it all sort of fell out. You just piss me off so much when you leave that window open, for god's sake, what's the point of bulletproof glass if Hydra can just climb through the first-floor window and take the 50 cent tour of our entire house," raising her voice to be heard above the sound of his laughter, "and you always just laugh like _sure Nat I'm sorry_ like it's nothing -"

"It is nothing!"

"It isn't! It isn't nothing! It isn't nothing that you leave the stupid window open and it isn't nothing that you won't fight with me about it properly like Steve." She was pouting, though not on purpose; it was, Bucky realised suddenly, simply the way her face fell when she was angry, and then he realised he'd never really seen it before, and that, that was a loss, pure and simple. Everything they were belonged to each other, and to Steve, including, especially, the ugly parts; including their anger.

Huh. Bucky Barnes, losing a fight with someone he loved. That didn't happen often, unless it was Steve.

"Since when do you and Steve fight?" he said, to distract from how wrong-footed he felt.

Natasha blinked. "We fight all the time."

"I've never heard it."

"I mean we don't slam doors like you and Steve do."

"You just sit around and bitch at each other till one of you snaps?" said Bucky. Then he started laughing. "Oh man, you do, don't you?"

"We have totally rational conversations where we disagree with each other and work it out," Natasha said primly, and then she sniggered. "OK, yeah, there's bitching. But I can't even do that with you. D'you know how frustrating that is? It's like being patted on the head and told to run along and play."

Bucky chewed his lower lip for a second. "Sorry," he said at last. "It just - I mean genuinely - it doesn't bother me."

"Oh come _on_. I don't buy that for a second. Lot of things bother you, James. You just don't show it. To me. And it makes me feel like - Steve gets it, but not me, and that’s not _fair_."

For several long moments Bucky stared up at the ceiling in silence. Then he said, thoughtfully, "When I was a kid - I was eight when Becca was born, you know. Just turned eight. And all my life it had been just me and Steve, and he got sick sometimes and did dumb stuff, but, well, so did I, and we’d always done everything _together_. But now suddenly there were these - these little - fragile - these kids I was responsible for. And I see you rolling your eyes but I was. It wasn't like with Coop and Lila where Laura says look after each other and then an hour later she's back and everything's fine. Some ways, I raised 'em. Maybe that doesn’t happen so much anymore…" Finally he looked at her. "You're right I guess. Steve's the only person who gets it because he doesn't -"

"Doesn't depend on you," said Natasha. "Well, neither do I." She touched his face, smiling ruefully. "Get that through your thick skull."

"Ma'am, yes ma'am." He leaned in; she stroked his jaw as they kissed, sweet and easy and soft, much better than the biting angry kisses of before. Then he pulled back to say, "I know you don't - that's not it - it's that -"

"I know, I know, I can see your guilt complex a mile away." She kissed him again. "It's not too different to mine."

"Yeah, well." He propped himself up on one elbow and leaned over her to do the thing properly, which, he was assured, was greatly appreciated.

+++

Steve was upstairs in their bedroom, propped against the pillows watching TV on the laptop with his earphones in; the NYT was scattered haphazardly around his knees.

"Done breaking the furniture?" He was actually blushing.

"A couple of mugs," Natasha admitted. "Are you blushing?"

"He's blushing," said Bucky. "What the hell." He shook his head at Steve, laughing.

"Walking in on you working out your issues with angry kitchen sex is exactly as awkward as it sounds, thanks," said Steve. "The state of our relationship otherwise has nothing to do with it."

"There's definitely something wrong with me when _you_ start sounding sensible," Bucky said vaguely; the insult was automatic and thus half-hearted.

"For the record, I'm not cleaning the kitchen."

"We cleaned the kitchen, stop getting your panties in a twist." Natasha flourished a clean pair of the garment in question in triumph. “I don’t know what _happened_ to the other ones.”

Steve was eyeing her up as she shimmied out of her jeans, cataloguing the red marks where the fabric had bit into her soft skin before it tore. “I wonder.” He looked at Bucky, grinning faintly, and rather to his own surprise it was Bucky’s turn to blush. Steve crowed triumphantly, and Natasha spun round in surprise; then she caught a handful of his shirt and tugged him in for a kiss, laughing softly against his mouth.

“I thought you were going out,” said Steve innocently when Bucky pulled back; Natasha was leaning against him all soft and pliant, hair hanging down her back, eyes half-closed; she got this way sometimes, after sex, got gentle and affectionate and in a sweet teasing mood where she liked to be manhandled a little, held, kissed, caressed, even carried. Bucky hated to miss a single second of it.

“More important things,” he said: the woman in his arms, the man on the bed behind them, the life they were building for themselves together.

“Can I draw you like that?” Steve asked softly. “Just like that. Hold still for just a little.” He was rummaging in the bedside drawer, looking for a pencil.

“No, wait,” said Natasha. “Let me put my pants back on,” and the drawing never did get done, because they were laughing too much, and kissing too much, too.

 

 

 


End file.
